Frankfurt motor show: the concepts

Decipher the new cars from Frankfurt with TG’s exclusive totaliser! How many will actually happen?

Audi tried this three years ago of course, with a car called simply the Quattro Concept that was much more true to the original spirit. But it would have meant tooling up a new lightweight carbon-intensive shell, and re-engineering the turbo five to go longitudinally. Those are big-ticket items, and the revenue for a 350bhp-odd car wouldn't justify it. So now we get a bulkier, more powerful, more complex, and far more yellow machine. If they did sell it they could charge more because it's a V8, yet development cost would actually be lower, because it uses the firm's modular hybrid drivetrain and forthcoming MLB2 architecture.